Demesne Patron EX SS 32 – My Next Demesne! I'm Happy With My Wife! (Patreon)

Taeclas woke up to another wonderful morning with her wife in her arms.

She wanted to stay right where she was until the mid-morning, but unfortunately, she had a job to do.

…

She had a job to do, time to get up…

…

Move Tae, move…

…

Oh colors, her wife was so warm and soft and lush and smelled so nice…!

She was in the middle of nuzzling the side of Rybelle's neck when her wife said, "I'm awake Tae, I'm awake."

Tae's morning brightened immediately. "Good morning, moonlight," she said cheerfully.

Soft lips kissed her cheek. "Good morning, petal. Don't you have to get up to work in the fields?"

"Hmm… I'm still sleepy. Quick bell-ring to wake me up?"

A finger gave her nose a soft swat. "Get up, petal. You have work to do."

"Just a little?" Taeclas whined.

"We can have a quick one when you come to get your bath bucket," Rybelle said, and Tae moaned as her wife pulled away. "Now get up and get dressed. You don't want Shana and Karina to be the only ones working out in the fields, do you?"

At the mention of the two young girls, Tae sighed. Reluctantly, she got up. Their one-room house was far bigger than the rented room they used to live in, with thick stone walls and a high ceiling. With the door closed and the paper screen over the windows closed, very little of the pre-dawn light came in, but a mild radiance came from under the bed.

Tae winced guiltily as she realized that the rock that Lori had given her had fallen on the floor again. Maybe she should stop putting it next to her pillow, it always kept falling off. The stone floor was cold and hard under her feet before she was able to find the reed tsinelas that she'd been given a couple of days after she'd arrived in her new demesne. Slipping them on—so much more convenient than boots and shoes—Tae picked up the little rock and placed it on the bed for the moment before getting to her feet.

Every breath filled her with magic, which moved outward from her lungs to naturally imbue the life in her body. As she had ever since she'd first began learning Deadspeaking, Taeclas took a moment to check her body for any problems. No blight, her organs were working as they should… a few of her muscles were a little sore from having been slept on awkwardly, but with a few breaths, she was able to tame the life in those muscles into meanings that helped relieve the soreness. It was excessive, she knew—ailments seldom appeared so quickly—but checking was part of her routine.

Taking a cloth Rybelle had set out the night before—she didn't like Tae using any old cloth—Tae moistened it with some water from the jug they'd filled last night and gave herself a quick wipe. While dustlife wasn't something she had to worry about, being sticky was annoying. Well, it was annoying later. In the moment, however…

That quick not-even-really-an-ablution done, Tae pulled on last night's clothes. The glowing rock, she tied to her forehead for light with a harness she'd Deadspoken together from some bits of leather she'd been able to ask for from Yhoel, the local cobbler and leather worker. Giving Rybelle one last kiss before she left—her wife gave her a sleepy pat on the cheek as she finally started sitting up to get ready for her own day's work—Tae headed out to do a morning's work.

Outside, the predawn morning was cool—cooler than the inside of her house, actually—and while the sky was brightening, at ground-level it was still dark save for the little patches of light from the bindings of lightwisps on some of the houses. Those were all Lori's work, and from what she'd heard their Dungeon Binder had been maintaining them for a year now. Though she supposed that with heavy imbuement, those bindings never have to be remade as long as they were regularly imbued.

Tae waved to the other people coming out of their houses to take advantage of the early morning cool and get work done. Already, she could see people at the site of the sawmill—even if they were mostly indistinct shapes and shadows—with saws and hand drills and chisels to prepare the various beams that would support the roof. Tae had been asked if she'd be willing to help fuse beams together so they would be more solid, but because of how slow she was at woodworking with dead wood, it had been decided that her contribution could wait until the beams had been set up so she wouldn't slow down construction. That had been fair.

One of the lattice poles was already gone when she arrived at the tool shed, making her wince again as she realized the two children had gotten ahead of her this morning. Grabbing the remaining pole, Tae headed to where she'd left off yesterday. She had meanings to set!

Looked at objectively, she was working far more than she had when she and Rybelle had lived in Covehold Demesne, but it was work she was far better suited for than woodworking. And while it was still hot outside, she could use the baths as often as she wanted—even with how crowded it was—and she was basically allowed to stay in the dungeon once it got too hot to work outside. None of her old jobs had ever let her do that! She wasn't even allowed to nap if she finished eating quickly!

After a full morning of taming the same meaning—with minor alterations accounting for little details—over and over and over again, Taeclas stopped to get ready for breakfast. That was another thing. She didn't have to rush through her meals, and instead got to spend them with her wonderful wife and their new friends… and Lori, but Tae was working on her. For all that she was prickly, grouchy, and seemed to get nauseous at meal times for some reason—which was terrible, because Lori clearly enjoyed the food!—she seemed like a good person. Mostly.

Sweat beading her head, Tae hurried home to find Rybelle back with the morning's laundry. That was another thing that had changed about their circumstances. Water was so plentiful and clean that they could afford to wash their clothes every day, and were actually encouraged to do so because of how much everyone was sweating due to the heat. The laundry was still wet, but they'd lay the blouses and shirts and sheets out in the sun later. They'd be dry by the end of the day.

"Moonlight…!" Tae sang as she stepped into their house, pulling off the harness with the rock on it, closing the door behind her and latching it in place. Light came through the window, filtered through the paper screen. "It's later…!"

Rybelle laughed, but opened her arms as they gently sat down on the bed…

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Once both of them had their bell rung, they were off to the baths, buckets with their soap, towels and the clothes they'd be changing into in hand. A greedy part of Tae wanted to pout at only doing it once, but she'd learned not to listen to that one. Her wife was beautiful and warm and soft and she wanted to be with her all day, all the time, but alas! They both had to eat, and to be fed they had to work… but at least they got to do so with each other, and no one seemed to really mind when they were affectionate over breakfast.

Unfortunately, she didn't get a chance to talk to Lori directly this morning. The Dungeon Binder was busy talking to Rian, discussing how their meat stores were holding, and whether they should direct their focus on acquiring beast or seel meat.

"Seel meat might be best," Rian said, even as Mikon held up a spoon of stew for him to eat. "Mikon, really, I can feed myself."

"If you can, then do so," Lori said, looking pointedly at his still mostly-full bowl, compared to all of theirs that were… well, less full.

"Fine, fine, I will… Mikon, can I have my spoon back?"

"Open your mouth," Mikon said, a huge smile on her face.

Rian did just that, a tolerant look on his face as he ate the spoonful, and for some reason met Rybelle's eye, the two sharing a nod. Huh? What was that about?

"Back to the topic at hand," Lori said as she started tearing pieces from her bread to start dipping into her stew. "Why seel meat?"

"Well, they're a lot closer to us than the beasts, unless you want to try going after the chokers here and on the other side of the river, so they're more accessible. Also, we're going to need more fat for soap. The only question is whether we send people to go seeling or you take a morning off to do it and we have people spend the rest of the day doing the butchering."

Tae winced slightly at the mention of butchering. While she liked eating meat as much as anyone, she much preferred where vegetables came from. It was why Rybelle used to be the one who bought their meat back when they'd lived in Covehold Demesne. Well, that and because she worked closer to the butcher's.

Lori grunted. "Why do I have to be the one to catch seels?" she grumbled, sounding more like a child complaining about her chores than a Dungeon Binder of a successful demesne… although to be fair, Tae really couldn't think of how a Dungeon Binder of a successful demesne would sound like. She could turn to little Shana, but the girl would be the first to declare she had been an unsuccessful Dungeon Binder and that Lori was much better than her.

Taeclas had tried to explain to Shana that she was a child and that it was unreasonable for anyoneto expect her to be able to lead a demesne, never mind require her to, which had led to one of the only two arguments she'd had with the girl, respectful and amiable as it had been. Shana had insisted that as River's Fork's once-Dungeon Binder, she'd had the responsibility to lead her demesne regardless of other factors, and do all that was necessary to do so. The fact that she had later proven unsuitable apparently made no difference, she had argued.

It had taken speaking to Rian to understand why Shana believed this, which had left Tae with mixed feelings. On the one hand, it had been reassuring to know that Lori seemed to believe this, and did so strongly enough that it came through when Shana had started imitating her behavior. On the other hand, it was obvious that Lori was treating Shana as a Dungeon Binder rather than a child, something that Shana herself seemed to do. That was… Tae hadn't been able to find the words, until Rian had given her some. 'How could something be both utterly respectful and absolutely horrible?'

The other argument with little Shana had been when Tae had found out that Lori had outright ordered the young girl to not learn any further Deadspeaking. That was simply irresponsible! Even ignoring the fact that a third Deadspeaker would make all the work she had to do much, mucheasier—a thought that Tae had been glad was the last reason she'd come up with—keeping little Shana ignorant and simply using her as… as… as a convenient bead for imbuing meanings was demeaning (heh)! That wasn't even counting the danger of what might happen should Shana start experimenting on her own out of curiosity!

However, Shana had been firm in her insistence on following Lori's order, rebuffing Tae's offer of teaching her in secret. In fact, Shana had even scolded her, saying that Lori would likely have a dim view of 'her authority being challenged in such a manner', but that she would keep the conversation secret so that Tae wouldn't be punished.

When she'd later spoken to Rian, he'd confirmed that Lori would in fact react poorly to hearing what Tae had offered to do.

And now that same person was complaining about going seeling, sounding more like she was resigned to do so rather than declaring she wouldn't.

"Oh, it doesn’t need to be you," Rian said cheerfully. "I'm sure that once Karina hears we need more seels she'd be more than glad to spend all afternoon out in the sun, trying to catch them. Probably talk some of the other children into it. Hopefully they all remember to wear hats."

She would? Tae knew that the little girl was very helpful, always helping out in the dungeon farm and helping little Shana when the latter was imbuing the meanings Tae had left, but Tae didn't think Karina would do something like that. Although…. well, Rian would know her better…

Lori glared at him for some reason, but Tae was surprised to see it was a far more intense expression than Rian's comment seemed to warrant. "No putting the children to work!" Lori snapped with surprising vehemence. "You know that! You all know that!" That last was pitched loudly, in a rare acknowledgement of that fact the other tables could hear Lori and Rian when they discussed matters.

"I wasn't going to, but when she finds out, she's going to grab her seeling rod and start going after the seels anyway," Rian said. "You know how she is."

This got another glare, but it was Lori's 'I hate it when you're right' glare. "Fine. I'll pull a few seels out of the water after breakfast. Make sure they're butchered properly."

"Of course, your Bindership," Rian said cheerfully as Umu reached over and picked up Rian's spoon, scooping up more stew from his bowl. Mikon helped hold the bowl steady, winking at the other woman. "I'm sure everyone will be glad to hear we're not likely to run out of so—Umu, I can feed myself!"

"We're all doubting that," Lori said blandly. Her bowl had been wiped clean, and the last piece of bread went to the woman's mouth, where she quickly chewed and swallowed. The Dungeon Binder looked about, seeing she was out of food, and sighed. "Eat quickly and get people organized to start butchering. I'm going to go get the seels now." She stood up and headed for the Dungeon's entrance, clearly intent on doing just that.

As soon as she was out the door, Rian pitched his voice to carry, even as he kept trying to take his spoon from an amused Umu. "All right everyone, you all heard her! We need people to help deal with the seels who are about to have an out-of-water experience thanks to our dear Dungeon Binder. We can't let her do all the work after all!"

There were cries of acknowledgment all around, and Rian finally got his spoon back after he 'distracted' Umu with a kiss. "Later, Umu. I have to eat fast now, there's work to do. Tae—"

"I have to get back to the fields!" Tae said quickly.

"… I was going to ask which of our crops needed the seel guts for fertilizer more right now, the dungeon crops or the field crops?"

"Oh, thank the Binder," Tae sighed.

"I'm sure Lori would say she you have nothing to thank her for," Rian said, just before he raised a spoonful of stew to his mouth and swallowed.

Tae laughed. "She would, wouldn't she? Uh, the dungeon crops probably need it more, since we've been able to push them more than the field crops. We'll still need to fertilize the fields once they've been cleared and harvested, though."

Rian nodded. "I'll see about trying to do the butchering far from you, but it probably won't be possible. We mostly bleed the seels near the fields so the nutrients in the blood doesn't go to waste."

"Thank you for trying, even if you can't do it. "Ugh, blood. This was another reason why Tae preferred living plants! Flesh and blood, living or dead, made her stomach roil when it wasn't on the inside like it should be! "By the way," she asked, "what did you mean about Karina going seeling if she found out?"

Despite everything, even if Binder Lori was weird and Tae vowed to keep an eye on her, living in Lorian Demesne was wonderful!